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The Netflix generation doesn’t do compromise

James Kirkup

Like on-demand TV, politics is being fractured into insular groups with fewer shared experiences

The cultural history of the late 20th century won’t have much space for Bread. Carla Lane’s sitcom about a crafty Scouse family with hearts of gold. Bread was . . . OK. Not bad, not great, not a patch on Lane’s previous work — Butterflies, with Wendy Craig. Just OK.

Yet 30 years ago, Bread was big. In 1988, it was regularly watched by more than 15 million people and one episode hit 20 million. For those 30 minutes, a third of the British population were doing exactly the same thing: watching Bread.

Last week, the most popular show on TV was EastEnders, which just scraped past six million — less than a tenth of the country and not all watching at the same time,…